You can never have enough power outlets these days, particularly around the home entertainment cabinet. But amongst all of those power cables, we know there's a lot of wasted power when certain devices aren't in use, but still keep themselves in standby.

Here are three quick ideas to save real money every year by shutting down what isn't needed without a major fuss.

One is to grab a smarter power board. Companies like Belkin offer boards that shut down some points completely, and other boards offer individual switching to let you totally shut off individual items.

Another is to add cable labels, so you can literally pull the plug on devices when you know they're not in use. The labels make it obvious which plug belongs to which device, so you can pull the plug with confidence.

Finally, you can get tricky by running a pair of power boards — buy different colours to save confusion, then put all critical devices like PVRs on one that stays on at all times, and other devices like the TV and game consoles onto one board that gets switched off completely every night.

Between these three ideas, you should have no excuse for not fixing the leaky power tap that lives down the back of your TV.